About Us

Board Member Steve O'Malley

Steve O’Malley — Board Mem­berMet­ro­pol­i­tan Fire Brigade

Exec­u­tive Summary

For more than a decade, I have been direct­ly involved in ini­tia­tives and inno­va­tion relat­ing to shap­ing a more equi­table and fair­er work­place and soci­ety in my capac­i­ty as an MFB Fire-fight­er. This advo­ca­cy and agency has also been a dri­ver in my per­son­al life and I feel that the com­bi­na­tion of pro­fes­sion­al acu­men and per­son­al pas­sion and enthu­si­asm has estab­lished me as a leader in equi­ty and inclu­sion prac­tice in the Emer­gency Man­age­ment Sec­tor. The goal or pur­pose of my activ­i­ty has been and still remains, the elim­i­na­tion of gen­der based vio­lence through gen­der equi­ty. The objec­tive, by which I hope to sus­tain my goal’s jour­ney, is through the con­tin­u­a­tion of val­ued part­ner­ships both with­in and out­side the emer­gency man­age­ment sec­tor. Below is a sum­ma­ry of work under­tak­en by me util­is­ing the net­works and part­ner­ships I have estab­lished in my cur­rent role, relat­ing to gen­der equi­ty and inclu­sion in accor­dance with MFB’s vision of ​‘safer more resilient communities’.

Back­groundI am cur­rent­ly employed by the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Fire Brigade (MFB) as the Mul­ti­cul­tur­al Liai­son Offi­cer (MLO) in Cen­tral Dis­trict.The role of the MLO includes the pro­vi­sion of advice and assis­tance on the imple­men­ta­tion and mon­i­tor­ing of poli­cies and pro­ce­dures for diverse com­mu­ni­ties. Diverse com­mu­ni­ties include mul­ti­cul­tur­al, lin­guis­tic, Abo­rig­i­nal, the aged, peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and women’s groups, with­in the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Dis­trict.The MLO man­ages the devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of diver­si­ty relat­ed projects and train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties with­in the MFB. The MLO pro­vides advice, infor­ma­tion and feed­back to Oper­a­tional Com­mand on iden­ti­fied and emerg­ing risks with­in diverse com­mu­ni­ties and man­age and coor­di­nate the deliv­ery of com­mu­ni­ty resilience strate­gies in accor­dance with the MFB’s busi­ness plans.Most impor­tant­ly, the MLO devel­ops and main­tain links, part­ner­ships and net­works with appro­pri­ate exter­nal bod­ies and author­i­ties. These part­ner­ships must include, but are not lim­it­ed to non-Gov­ern­ment, social ser­vice and the not for prof­it sec­tor ser­vice providers.The suc­cess of the MLO pro­gram since its incep­tion in 2007 is illus­tra­tive by the fact that Melbourne’s CALD and new­ly arrived com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers are safer now than they were pri­or to MFB engage­ment, and there is noth­ing to sug­gest that this will not con­tin­ue into the future with con­cert­ed pre­ven­tion and pre­pared­ness activ­i­ties.My activ­i­ties in rais­ing aware­ness of gen­dered vio­lence have a direct cor­re­la­tion with MFB’s work in the mit­i­ga­tion of the risk of injury and death as a result of fire in our most vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties, where ​‘pre­ven­tion’ is the key.

Gen­der and Dis­as­ter Task­force estab­lished by Emer­gency Man­age­ment Vic­to­riaEstab­lished by the Emer­gency Man­age­ment Com­mis­sion­er to bring a gen­der focus to dis­as­ter pol­i­cy, plan­ning, train­ing and prac­tice, in order to improve the sup­port that men and women receive before and after dis­as­ters, mit­i­gate risks to men’s and women’s health and well­be­ing post-dis­as­ter, and build aware­ness of the need for atten­tion for gen­der in dis­as­ter plan­ning and com­mu­ni­ty recov­ery.What About the Men? Men’s Advi­so­ry group estab­lished. This net­work was estab­lished to con­tin­ue the con­ver­sa­tion direct­ly relat­ing to the research post Black Sat­ur­dayWhite Rib­bon Foun­da­tionAdvi­sor, Nation­al White Rib­bon Aus­tralia Ambas­sador Ref­er­ence GroupEmer­gency ser­vices rep­re­sen­ta­tive on stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tion for Vic­to­ri­an White Rib­bon Ambas­sador e-learn­ing Project to fur­ther the Ambas­sadors under­stand­ing of the caus­es, types, preva­lence and impact of men’s vio­lence against women. http://​www​.whi​terib​bon​.org​.au/… rep­re­sen­ta­tion on the Nation­al White Rib­bon Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander ​‘fam­i­ly vio­lence’ ref­er­ence groupMFB rep­re­sen­ta­tion on the Nation­al White Rib­bon Cul­tur­al­ly and Lin­guis­ti­cal­ly Diverse ​‘fam­i­ly vio­lence’ ref­er­ence group